Monday, April 22, 2013

Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf; O'Reilly Media

Lean UX is an attempt to find the holy grail of agile user centered design. Jeff Gothelf applies principles of user centered (a.k.a UX) design to the agile software development lifecycle. The philosophy of constant user feedback are at the core of both UX and agile, but their rhythms don't necessarily harmonize. It is not easy to find time in a fast paced agile lifecycle to apply UX.

Jeff Gothelf manages to dovetail pure agile methodology with UX techniques like prototyping and user testing. Lean UX has a lot of great sections on the concepts of UX and agile. However, there is also plenty of concrete examples taken from the author's own experiences.

Overall, Lean UX is an easy read and a good guide for meshing rapid development while maintaining focus on the end user. It's a well written book that is actually useful for project managers, systems engineers, and designers. There is nothing particularly new in this book, just old principles integrated with one another in new ways. Sometimes, that's all it takes to be truly innovative.